Maybe Messy Is What You Need
by Maralott Kinnen
Summary: Mary and Marshall have unfinished business. But it's not just Mary's issues that stand in their way. A canon-friendly post-finale correction of the disastrous or just plain lame series ending. M for strong language and sexuality.
1. Don't Say Farewell

**A/N: **So you say Mary and Marshall couldn't have been gotten together in the space of one episode? I beg to differ, and offer my humble suggestion for how it could have been done. Just one more agonized author joining the "not-so-fake-wake" in mourning of the untimely and unceremonious demise of _In Plain Sight, _in the time-honored tradition of: "Don't get mad - get fan fiction".

I whole-heartedly agree with everyone who has commented on here that Marshall would get bored with Abigail. I think he himself is too complicated a person for such a simplistic relationship. That is largely the point of this fic.

Not only was the series finale insulting to the character of Mary, imo, by short-changing her of the growth as a character that I, frankly, think she has earned, it also seemed insulting to Marshall as a character. They made it look like at the end of the day, he really is the nerdy weasely "nice guy" who doesn't quite have the stomach to hack Mary's... well, Mary-ness. Totally unfair portrayal! We, the fans, know better, right?

Well, if you still have any doubts, read on and let them be assuaged... and you may find yourself looking at Mary and Marshall in a whole new light... or a whole new darkness, for that matter...

* * *

**Playlist:**

"Close Enough to Perfect" Alabama (the lyrics of this song are so completely perfect for Mary – I really wish I could post them. Unfortunately, you'll have to look them up for yourself).

"Dark Side" Kelly Clarkson

"Out of My Bones" Randy Travis

"Whiskey Girl" Toby Keith

"Don't Think of Me" Dido

"Along the Way" Gary Allan

"You Don't Know Her Like I Do" Brantley Gilbert

"Dream Walkin'" Toby Keith

"Get Off On the Pain" Gary Allan

"All You Want" Dido

"Life for Rent" Dido

"You Shouldn't Kiss Me Like This" Toby Keith

"Learning How to Bend" Gary Allan

"Here With Me" Dido

"Need You Now" Lady Antebellum

"White Flag" Dido

"Somewhere with You" Kenny Chesney

"I Think I've Had Enough" Gary Allan

"This Land Is Mine" Dido

"A Wish for Something More" Amy MacDonald

"Half of My Mistakes" Gary Allan

"I'm No Angel" Dido

* * *

_We all live in hiding. In one way or another, each of us conceals pieces of ourselves from the rest of the world. Some people hide because their lives depend on it, others because they don't like being seen. And then there are the special cases, the ones who hide because... because... because they just want someone to care enough to look for them._

( Wikiquote wiki/In_Plain_Sight. 5/31/12)

* * *

"Stan, before you take off for D.C, there's a personnel thing I need you to handle for me." Mary had shut the door of newly-made Deputy Director McQueen's empty-but-for-computer office tightly behind her and stood in front of his bare desk, jacket lapels folded back by hands that rested on the waistband of her jeans.

"Mary, whatever it is, I'm sure that Marshall is more than capable of handling it…" McQueen hardly bothered to glance up as he flicked through e-mails.

"No, no, I don't think so", said Mary with a hard stubbornness barely concealed by a veneer of easy-going. "I really need you to do this for me, Stan." She uttered the magic words, accompanied by the magic ingredient: genuineness.

"For Chrissake, Mary, what is it?" Stan slapped his palms down on his desk and looked up sharply into the eyes of his second-most tenured inspector.

"I want to transfer to Denver." Mary dropped the bomb and waited for the blast.

Stan's mouth tightened and hardened.

"Give me one Goddamn good reason why."

"I don't have to have a reason to request a transfer."

"But you do have to have one to get it approved by me. I worked hard to put this team together, Mary. I think this office is the best in the country. And I expected this team to be mature enough not to fall apart without me personally sitting here in Albuquerque babysitting it." She had managed to raise Stan's rarely-seen ire. She would take that as a compliment of how much he valued her professionally, and an opportunity to override his reasoning capacities and bully him into doing her bidding.

"Fine." She shot right back at him, easily re-taking the offensive. "I don't want to work under Marshall", she stated with finality. The best lies were always the ones that are almost the truth.

"You're kidding me? You two are the closest pair of partners I've ever seen in any branch of law enforcement…"

"Exactly, Stan! Exactly!" said Mary emphatically. "He got promoted, I didn't! The only way Marshall and I could ever work together was as equals. Now the power-balance is all screwed-up. Marshall and I were always way to close to begin with, you know that. Now he's my boss? Do you honestly think any office can sustain that level of kinkiness?" Mary's lips were pursed, daring Stan to challenge her.

"So you're really that jealous, hm, Mary?" Damn. He was still fighting back. "You couldn't just be happy for the guy? And I'm not just talking about the promotion, Mary…"

Jesus. I am happy for him… that's why I'm getting myself the hell out of here…

"I don't know, Stan", said Mary, artfully playing off her own weaknesses, "Maybe it's just more than I can handle all at once. Maybe I'm just not up to this. Magnanimity was never my strong suit…"

"You can say that again", said Stan angrily. He was disappointed in her. Good. Just as all his other little fledglings were spreading their wings and taking to the sky, Mary was climbing back inside her shell. As it should be. "I expected better than this of you, Mary Shannon." Boy, Stan's disappointment had him really fired up.

Mary's metaphorical fingers twitched around her metaphorical trump card. Stan was being impossible. And she was prepared to shut this conversation down.

"Marshall and I slept together." She let the words be punctuated by a ringing silence that reverberated around the empty office like a gunshot in a box canyon.

Sure. It was a bald-faced lie. A cold-blooded bluff. But it was just believable enough. And Stan wouldn't call on it – he had just promoted Marshall, and the last thing he was going to say or do right now was anything that could vaguely jeopardize Marshall's professional standing – or Stan's personal opinion of him. This was what Mary was counting on. Stand didn't have to wholly believe her – he just had to not want to learn the truth.

The silence continued unbroken as Stan fished some papers out of a satchel.

"Here's the request for transfer forms." His voice was steely as he slapped the papers to Mary across the desk. "Get them back to me by the end of the day, and your ass is on its way to Denver."

Goodby, Stan McQueen, thought Mary. He would never look at her the same way after this. She had just committed cold-blooded friendshipicide. It was more than worth it.

Screw Stan, screw this office, and screw WITSEC. It was all spitting in the ocean compared to seeing Marshall happy…

She grabbed the papers like a hobo on a Big Mac and vanished from soon-to-be-Marshall's new office.


	2. The Ties That Blind

_But life, I find, is often more about the storms than the peace they seek to overwhelm. They lurk, ready, any minute now, to shake things up and take your breath away._

(Wikiquote In_Plain_Sight 5/31/12)

* * *

Holy shit, she had accumulated a lot of crap. Maybe there was something to be said for diligent organization after all…

She had really thought that an hour-and-a-half should be plenty of time for her to come in, swoop up her stuff, and be outta there before Marshall showed his prying, know-it-all face. So she really hadn't been watching the clock…

"Eeeurgh…" Mary peeled the flattened paper cup that had once housed a Reese's peanut butter cup off of the two documents that it was currently gluing together. She flung the ancient candy wrapper into her wastepaper bin, only to curse when she realized that she had already pitched the liner and its contents, and the Reese's cup would now have to be manually removed from the naked brown plastic pit of the bin.

She glanced back at her file cabinet. It was at last gloriously empty, save for a handful of fossilized French fries.

She picked up one of the French fries and tapped it on the surface of her desk. Judging by its relative hardness, she dated it to at least the mid Cretaceous period. Christ, she was glad Marshall couldn't see her doing this…

"You gonna eat that?"

"Shit!" Mary screamed as she half-whirled, half-fell out of her chair. The French fry clattered to the floor. Striding toward her was Marshall, looking as composed and fresh-faced as ever. "Jesus, you're in early!"

"No…" he said slowly, "but you are." His keen eyes instantly took in every detail of Mary and her surroundings. "Doing a little surreptitious spring cleaning? Didn't want the rest of us to get the idea that you do have the ability to be tidy?"

He was fishing for annoyance, but the unusually high level of fear circulating in Mary's bloodstream kept the other emotions at bay.

"Well, you know what they say, there's a first time for everything", said Mary, clutching at some sense of normalcy. Approaching too close for comfort, Marshall began to rifle through the heaps of paper topping Mary's desk. "No, no, no! Don't mess with the piling system!"

"I remember this case!" Marshall's trademark boyish smile lit up his face as he lifted one of the staple-bound hunks of dead tree.

"Please, for once, can we skip the stroll down Memory Lane?" It was taking every ounce of sarcasm Mary was capable of mustering to mask the panic that threatened to hijack her voice. Marshall replaced the papers.

"Alright, then, if history doesn't take your fancy this fine morning, how about a little archaeology?" He was in way too good of a mood. It was probably fucking Abigail's fault. Couldn't he just have stayed in bed half an hour longer for a little morning nookie…?

Marshall's face disappeared as he lifted Mary's wastepaper bin to gaze into the bottom of it.

"Eeewww… What is that?" The bin lowered and Marshall's face reappeared, nose wrinkled and features contorted.

"Damned if I know… I just want it gone…" grumbled Mary.

"Your wish is my command!" Marshall whisked up the bin and headed for the break room. Mary thought sure he was going to skip.

"Hey, Genie of the Garbage Can, no one said I wanted your help!" she shouted after him.

"I don't favor the odds of you ever finding your way out of The Cave of Wonders over there by yourself!" he shouted back.

"Hey hey hey – no literary references before lunch…!" yelled Mary.

"I believe it was you who supplied said reference in the first place", Marshall answered.

She heard the faucet running in the break room as he washed, and then dried, her wastepaper bin for her. Damn him.

All of a sudden, one by one, the rest of the office's staff began to trickle in.

Marshall brought back Mary's wastepaper bin and exchanged it for the drawer of her file cabinet, which he also carried to the break room to wipe out – fastidious twerp.

By the time he returned and reassembled her file cabinet, the office was full of people and the smell of coffee. Phones rang – but not Mary's.

"What will be m'lady's pleasure? Dewy Decimal, or Library of Congress?" Marshall was starting to go through Mary's papers again.

"I don't need a filing lesson, Marshall", said Mary, alarmed that though she'd been going for sharp, her voice instead came out fatigued.

"I wouldn't dream of trying to teach an old dog new tricks. I was going to do it for you. It'll only take a minute this way…" His arms were already full of files.

"Marshall, put the papers down…"

"You're all cleaned out and ready to go…"

"Put the Goddamn papers down! Or if you have to put them somewhere, stick them in those cardboard file boxes…!" Mary kicked to indicate the office moving boxes strewn around her desk.

"Okay… But Mary, some of these are active cases. This paperwork needs to stay where you can access it in the office…"

"No, it doesn't…"

"Um, I think it does…" Marshall had taken on his testy edge.

"Look, if you want the files to go with me, then they need to go in the boxes, because the boxes are going with me, and the desk is staying here. I'm pretty sure they have a desk all cleared out for me in Denver – best of all, a desk that your skinny ass has never sat on. Got it, genius?" Mary's voice had gotten too loud, the rest of the office too quiet.

Marshall was frozen, the color gone from his face. Several moments passed in deadly stillness before the soft thuds of the files falling out of Marshall's grip back onto the desk could be heard.

Mary's heart was pounding like she'd just been shot at. God, stop it…

When her ex-partner finally spoke, his voice was quiet and cold.

"How can you do this to me?"

Mary's blood boiled.

"You? How can _I_ do this to _you?"_ Mary jumped out of her skin when Marshall slammed his fists down on her desk and shouted – actually shouted – at her. Jesus, angry Marshall was scary. He made Stan look like a pussy cat.

"Explain to me in what universe it is fair or friendly to punish me like this?" he yelled. The rest of the office had entirely frozen now. Mary and Marshall had center ring, and no one dared take their eyes off of them for fear of life or limb, neither could anyone put a stop to the unfolding horror movie, because no one was about to tell the brand new branch chief that he was out of line, not at the height of the new-boss-ass-kissing phase.

"I guess life just isn't fair!" Stressed to the max, Mary fell back on a favorite mantra.

"Damn it, Mary!" Marshall's capacity to blithely weather Mary's self-destructive storms was suddenly shot to hell and hanging in ribbons. "I thought we were okay!"

Mary retaliated.

"You're okay! But I'm not! And you know what I've realized, Marshall?" Mary's loud voice oozed anger and venom, "Maybe I'm never going to be okay! Maybe I don't want to be okay! But you want to be okay and you are okay except the only thing stopping you from being okay is me being not okay but I can't be okay so the only way for you to be okay is for me to go be not okay somewhere else where you won't be able to know or be affected by_ how not okay I am!"_

"Fuck, Mary! If you're five hundred miles away how will I even know if you're okay or not?" Marshall was gripping the edge of the desk now, knuckles white.

"THAT'S the beauty of the plan! You won't even BE ABLE to know! What Marshall doesn't know can't hurt him…!"

"Bullshit!" snarled Marshall. "If anything ever happened to you…"

"It wouldn't be on your watch anymore! Mary Shannon is officially no longer Marshall Mann's problem. Signed, sealed, and delivered!"

"How the fuck do you think that would make me care any less, Mary?" Marshall looked at her like she'd just run him over with a semi. "This was never professional, it's always been personal from the very beginning!" Even Mary and Marshall themselves were startled by that admission. "And to think I'd thought that at the most important moment in my life, the one person I care about most might actually find it within herself to be happy for me!" That one was an even bigger shocker. The startling gravity of unconscious honesty shut the both of them up for several long seconds. But then, both eager to pretend away the ramifications of what Marshall had just accidentally said, they plowed back into the shit.

"Forget about me for a minute", Marshall broke the crushing silence. "What about Brandi? I thought you promised to help her. Now you're just going to run off to Denver? Mary, I've never seen you run from anything, as long as I've known you…"

"I run from everything, Marshall. Run from the past, run from the truth, run from myself… But most of all, I run from you. Always have. I'm a Shannon. It's what we do. You said it yourself, Marshall, we do a lot of talking without words… I don't even have to dial your phone number to fuck up your life. So why don't you just stand back and get the hell out of my way before I fuck up your perfect life…"

Mary had already slammed the pile of active case files into one of the file boxes. And when push came to shove, as it most certainly had, that was all she really needed. She had made a mess of this office in more ways than one. Now her parting gift to Marshall was this office-scene morale nightmare. It might take him weeks to repair his troops' faith in what they wanted to believe was their unshakable leader. What was a disaster-area desk, compared to the non-corporeal mess she was leaving behind? _I'm sorry, Marshall, _for the billionth and hopefully last time, _I am so fucking sorry…_

She seized the one critical file box, marched past the furious and crumpled figure of the only man she'd ever trusted, and escaped into the stifling freedom of the Albuquerque heat…


	3. Care and Feeding of an Exotic Animal

_I feel like I'm the keeper of this exotic animal, and I spend my time either protecting you from the world or the world from you. And it's just—it's a lot of responsibility._

_I'm sorry. But that's your job. And you cannot quit._

* * *

_Sometimes we hold on for dear life to the very things that keep us from living it, but that comes with an upside. It's the way we feel when we finally let go. The trick, I guess, is… to search for new things to cling to, and when you finally find them to _hang on just as tight_… you have to accept one universal truth: life is messy... But a wise man once said, maybe messy is what you need, and I think you might be right…_

* * *

_If you call I'll come. Every time._

__(Wikiquote In_Plain_Sight 5/31/12)

* * *

Marshall spent the first week of Mary's absence being angry – an emotional state far more noticeable to him than to anyone around him. Even Abby seemingly failed to detect the slow simmer that underlay everything he said, from, "There are no second chances in WITSEC", to, "Please pass the green beans"…

The second week he spent worrying. Apart from imagining Mary going into some sort of depressive decline over the death of her father – they never did have a proper talk about that! – he caught himself wondering at odd moments throughout the day whether Nora was getting regular meals. Was there anyone for her to play with? Was Mary getting enough sleep?

By the third week, he just felt confused.

It seemed like someone had hit the pause button on his life the day that Mary stormed out of his office. And that made no sense. Because everyone else with whom his fate was intertwined was moving forward at light speed. He was worked off his feet at the office. And Abigail was planning like the wedding was tomorrow. She had picked the venue. He had picked the stationery. She trusted him to be good at that sort of thing. This secretly annoyed him, for some reason he couldn't put his finger on…

* * *

Mary, on the other hand, was living it up in Denver. She couldn't remember the last time she'd felt so free.

She was surrounded by absolute strangers.

All her new coworkers had bought the old, 'There's only room for one office bitch, and I'm it' routine.

She had a new handful of witnesses at least as kooky and schizoid as the Albuquerque bunch.

And Nora made sure she never slept more than four hours at a stretch.

Life was good.

* * *

And then she was out one Friday night for a rare beer with the guys from the office, and someone said, "Mary Shannon, for a single gal with a kid, you're the freest spirit I know…"

And it hit her. The unwelcome, soul-buckling weight of self-awareness. It felt good to be five hundred miles from Marshall Mann. Much, much too good.

She ran to the ladies room, splashed cold water on her face, glared at herself in the mirror, but it didn't stop the shaking.

It didn't stop when she got home, either, and she couldn't make herself sit down, let alone go to sleep in the tiny apartment that night.

She threw Nora in her car seat and took off for the airport…

* * *

The house in Albuquerque was deserted, no sigh of Brandi or Jinx. Just as well. She would track them down tomorrow.

She put Nora to bed, paced back into the living room and tremblingly dialed her cell phone. She still wasn't able to make herself sit, until she heard his voice on the other end of the line…

* * *

It was 2 a.m. Marshall grabbed his vibrating phone and slid out of bed, careful not to wake Abby. He made his way to the living room, dreading a witness crisis. He answered the phone without looking at it, and, stunned, was only able to say, "Yeah, yeah, I'll be there…"

* * *

Mary saw his headlights and opened the door for him before he could knock. Marshall wandered into her living room as though dazed. They were both ashen-faced with sleep deprivation.

"You wanted to talk", said Marshall thinly. Tears streamed down Mary's face, and Marshall was suddenly wide awake.

"I want you, not as the person I call up in the middle of the night, but as the person I don't have to call, because he's already right beside me…" blurted Mary. "I know, I know! I either should have said that years ago, or I shouldn't be saying it now! But I'm cowardly and inconsiderate, so I didn't say it then and I am saying it now…"

"And you just realized this when?" Marshall struggled for words. It went against every fiber of his being not to hold Mary to him when she cried, but he didn't dare let himself touch her until he heard her out.

"In Denver, tonight – no, before tonight, but I didn't let myself admit it til tonight. I had to leave to realize there was something really, really wrong with leaving. You know how I knew something was wrong, Marshall? I felt safe. For the first time since I've known you, I felt a hundred percent safe again. I've been trying to get rid of you since the day we met, and you never would let me go... And then, for the first time ever, you backed off, you gave me this excuse to get away and I pounced on it. 'Yeah, sure Marshall, go be happy with Abigail, because she makes you so happy', I just bullshitted the hell out of you to get you off my case and for the first time ever it actually fucking worked and I felt… free… I felt safe. Like if I could slip it past you just this once, then you'd never get inside me again." Never mind the tears, Mary was finding it hard to so much as breath. Continuing to talk seemed like a survival necessity.

"God, Marshall, you scared the crap out of me the first day I met you. It was like you could just open me up and see every broken thing inside me and I tried to make you feel like shit for being that intelligent, that insightful. Every chance I got. God knows I was chewing your ass with everything I've got.

"All these years, pretending that I was afraid of being abandoned, pretending that was my excuse to be an ass-hole – pretending to be afraid that every man was just like my father. But just by goddamn BEING you fucking called me out, because I know, I've always known, that you're _nothing_ like him. You made it so much harder to pretend that I'm not actually afraid OF him – I'm afraid of _becoming him,_ afraid that I AM him!

"Everyone else bought all the 'damaged, hard-working, dedicated' crap, but you saw me for how I see myself – _not as the abandoned,_ but as _the abandoner…"_

Now Mary was shaking with the body-racking sobs. It looked like this level of honesty was going to kill her. It was also clear that she had steeled herself to spit it out or die trying. Marshall could not help but feel his blood run cold with panic as he passively watched and tried to accept Mary in such extreme distress.

"You never let me rescue you, Marshall. Never let me pretend that I'm not what I really am. Just another cut off the same cloth as James Shannon…

"I tried so hard to make it up to Jinx and Brandy, for being just like him… never succeeded… But you wouldn't even let me try! With you I was just stuck being terrified and inadequate with nothing to do but lash out at you and when you finally let me go, run away. It hit me, even before Denver, standing on that horse track… with… with my dad's ashes... That's what my family does. We run to where it's safe, whether it's a betting ring, or the bottom of a bottle, or Florida… or away from you. I let myself run. I told myself it's all I know how to do, deep down, no matter how responsible I try to pretend to be. I'm really just a runner, and you always knew that anyway…

"You asked me to release you, Marshall. I don't know what the hell kind of hold I ever had on you, because I felt like it was you who released me. And it felt SO SAFE." Mary suddenly sobbed so hard she could barely form words, and Marshall thought it was going to kill him not to touch her. "**_I don't want to feel that safe anymore!_** I know it's too late for this, for – any kind of 'us'. You're in love and engaged. I just don't want to deal with that fact the easy way anymore – by running. Saying this shit out loud, to you, it's what I had to do, for me. _You are the most important person of my life, Marshall,_ the ONLY ONE I have ever trusted… If I couldn't be honest with you, how was I ever going to be honest with anyone, including myself?" Mary sought permission for yanking him out of bed in the middle of the night, for dumping her lifetime of crappy self-loathing on him. As if she could possibly justify this behavior. As if doing this now was anything but pig-headed and selfish. Regaining her breath, she sniffed loudly and dried her eyes on the backs of her hands. "Anyway, thanks for indulging my hare-brained attempt at becoming a functional human being, and I know this doesn't change anything for you, so you'd better scurry on back to your girl scout lady love now…"

Marshall scowled and shoved his hands into his pockets.

"No, no… you opened this can of worms, and I'm not going anywhere until we get to the bottom of it." Mary leaned back in surprise.

"I thought we were to the bottom of it?" She sniffed again. "I mean, Jesus, how much deeper can it get?"

"We got to the bottom of your half of the can. But this is a joint worm can, and my share of the nightcrawlers remains to be considered…" Marshall was still smarting as though the frightened-vicious things Mary had said about herself were physical wounds to his body, but he forced himself to put off his instinct to reassure her, because he knew that this time, mere words were not going to cut it…

"YOU have a can of worms?" said Mary, mildly astounded.

"Seeing as you've met, and worked with, my father on several occasions, I'll take that as a rhetorical question."

Wow. Marshall was right. And suddenly it occurred to Mary that aside from being a mark of intelligence and insight into her twisted inner world, his intellectualism annoyed her for the same reason that her cynicism annoyed him. It was a coping mechanism. They were both uniquely aware of each other's frailties, and had complimentary coping strategies. No wonder they drove each other crazy.

"Would Freud have something to say about the fact that we're using worms as a metaphor for our feelings about one another here?" asked Mary.

"Let's see, worms: blind, mindless bundles of animal life force driven entirely by the autonomic nervous system that have an instinctive fear of exposure and burrow underground whenever possible, except when it rains – rain being a symbol of emotional overwhelment – when they tend to come to the surface. Yep, I think the good doctor would have something to say about that…" Marshall's tone was laced with self-deprecation.

"Well, it was your metaphor", said Mary.

"Yes, a fact which indicates", Marshall stared seriously into her eyes through the midst of his intellectualizing, "that I am at least as repressed as you are… And incidentally, what you just told me", Marshall let out a long, agonized breath as he raked his fingers through his hair, "changes _everything._ Because it's exactly what I've been waiting nine years to hear you say… And", the words were tight and came out with explosive power, as though he were forcing them through a throat that was too small for them, and they erupted on the other side, deafening Mary… "I'm not sure I would have dated Abigail in the first place, if I had not first convinced myself that you were incapable of saying what you just said. And now, here you've proven me wrong. Now I have to face up to the realization that I've sold you short and… deal with the implications of that…" He placed his hands on the back of his head, gazed at the ceiling as he paced in a circle, as though performing some sort of druidic mind-clearing ritual… Only pretending to ignore the tear stains that left red streaks down Mary's face.

"But you love Abigail, you told me so…" whispered Mary. Marshall froze and looked her in the eyes again.

"Mary, if I had ever thought there was a snowball's chance in hell of you and I working out…" A silence heavy with implications fell.

"But my life is such a mess, I have Nora…"

"Do you honestly think Nora is in the leastwise a deterrent?" asked Marshall, his voice ringing with honesty. Something deep inside of Mary convulsed with longing – longing to let this man swoop in and save her like some story-book knight-in-shining-armor, longing to be loved – and longing to give love.

"So, it was just me that was the deterrent?" Mary asked. Marshall nodded grimly. "I guess this is the part where I apologize for being a jackass and leaving things til the thirteenth hour." Tears were threatening her again. God, no. She had to stave off the realization of what she'd lost. She could face that later, alone…

"It's not entirely your fault it's taken this long", choked Marshall. "It's never escaped my notice, the kind of men you date…" His eyes suddenly blazed with an expression Mary had never seen before, not even in the heat of combat. "Men who aren't afraid to take what they want, to just reach out and fill their hands with what's in front of them, just because they have to have it. You need that. That sense of being valued and desired that you can get only from a man who_ takes what he wants_… I must have passed up a thousand opportunities to grab you and pull you close…" Was that something like rage on the face of Marshall Mann? It froze Mary to her core. Even her breathing nearly came to a halt. "_What have I done?"_ Marshall sank to the ground, his fingers tangling in his hair, eyes unfocused, fierceness gone as suddenly as it had come. It was terrifying to hear his voice so uncharacteristically thin, that sound that warned that he was near his breaking point. Mary could not stop her brain before it coughed up, I wonder if Abigail has ever heard that sound? "I'm so afraid of letting you down, Mary. I don't trust myself… You need so much, and I don't know if I can give it… I'm not sure I could live with myself if I failed you… to say nothing of Nora…"

"But you could live with yourself if you failed Abigail?" challenged Mary, again the thought leaping to life before she could stop it, but this time finding words. "I'm sorry – I shouldn't have said that…" she began to self-correct right away.

"No, no", creaked Marshall, "It's exactly what you should have said. Why did I pursue a physical relationship with Abigail when I never let myself pull you close?"

"I don't know, professional ethics? Or maybe, just maybe, you were more attracted to her than me?"

"Oh, Mary… For such a smart girl, sometime it's astounding how oblivious you can be…" Marshall's voice rang with self-contempt, and it suddenly struck Mary that as hard as she worked to conceal her dark side, her former partner worked perhaps even harder to conceal his. It was with such a weird, insidious thrill that the awareness dawned, clearer than ever before, that Abigail did not understand this man. And with that thought, Mary's stomach twisted around the words, _let myself pull you close…_

"That's all this has ever been", Marshall growled suddenly. "Fucking self-doubt, and fucking playing it safe! Fearing you were too much for me to handle, and fearing how I'd torture myself if I failed. So I left you to the likes of Raf and Mark, letting them take the fall when things went south. Pretending that that kind of man could ever make you happy. Pretending that a simpler kind of woman could ever make me happy… Pretending I don't want what I want – OUT OF FEAR! What kind of man does that?" he spat with disgust.

"We both know I come with a lot of mess, Marshall. I can only grow a little bit at a time…"

"Damnit. Goddamn it, Mary! I love the mess! I love you, exactly like you are! If you never changed, I'd love you til the day I died… And the only reason I held off from diving headlong into the mess is because I question my ability. Do you understand? If I hadn't _doubted myself, _I never would have doubted you. Goddamn it. Never… I love the mess, Mary. It makes me feel… alive."

Yes, that was what had been missing these three weeks. Feeling alive.

Marshall jumped to his feet so suddenly Mary startled. He was on fire again, hotter and stronger than before.

"This is it. This ends here, tonight. You say you can't move forward while you're living a double life, afraid to admit who you are and what you feel. And neither can I."

In the blink of an eye, he had closed the distance between them.

And then his body was pressing into hers, hot and strong, and the speed with which her need flashed up to meet his staggered her. She must have been wanting this for so long she had forgotten she wanted it. Now she was drowning in it. The smell of him all around her. The feeling of him all over her. It was almost too much. Her molten blood seemed to be dissolving her muscles and bones. The painful hard grip of his hands round her arms was ecstasy.

His lips met hers in a sensation both achingly sweet and stingingly savage. Usually, when a man kissed her, Mary felt like she had the option of fighting back. This time, her jaw fell instinctively slack and her head tipped back languidly as she allowed Marshall's tongue to invade her forcefully.

God, she needed him in her. Everything about him, deep inside of her. How would she ever get him deep enough?

It was terrifying to be so suddenly forced so completely open. And she exalted in the terror of it.

"Mary", he breathed raggedly against her face as he broke the kiss.

"Marshall!" she whimpered needily. In the briefest instant, with the most basic expression of lust, he had made her his. Ready or not, belonging flooded her bloodstream.

She did not want to part from the heat and the hardness of him, not even to remove her clothes, not even to walk down the hallway. Her mind had snapped, and she clung feverishly to him, like a drowning man on wreckage, her sole hope of survival in a sea of emotions that threatened to destroy her.

Marshall, the calm eye in the center of her storms, the rock amidst the waves, the voice of reason in the dark night of her soul.

How had she ever pretended she wanted anything other than this? He had been right – not feeling she was desired, hotly, was the one thing that had allowed her to go on mocking and abstaining from him. Now that safe ground was forever gone, obliterated by this blinding lust that he was using to burn her from head to toe – and there was nothing left to pretend.

Grabbing her shoulders, Marshall peeled her off of him. She scrabbled at him like a cat at a locked door, until he seized her by the wrists and snarled, "Come with me!" He dragged her like a rag doll down the hallway and slammed her bedroom door behind them. He hauled her T-shirt over her head, her jeans down her hips, pushed her backwards onto the bed so he could slip them off her bare feet. They were both panting harder than they ever did at the gym.

"Fuck, Mary!" he growled as he leaned over her nearly naked body and pressed his mouth into hers again, his fingers raking down her soft belly, up the backs of her thighs, making her back arch with the thrill of his hands on her skin. His hands on her!

She had never felt so naked in her life.

He tore his mouth away from hers, wrapped one of his hands in her long hair and pinned her head to the bed.

"Take your bra off, show me your beautiful tits…" The words, out of Marshall's mouth, hit her like an electric shock and fired off a spasm of heat between her legs. How could one phrase make her feel dirty and loved at the same time?

She struggled to comply, with her head pinned to the bed, her hair pulling painfully as she had to raise her hips high off the bed to reach awkwardly behind her and unhook her bra, then pull it down her arms. Damn, there would be no debate about who was in charge in the bedroom. Obviously, sex brought Marshall's slight control-freakish tendencies out to play…

He filled his free hand with one breast and then the other, sending a strange warm sensation coursing through her that made her already-aching heart seem to swell all the more.

Her last vestiges of post-baby self-consciousness vanished when he paused a moment to look down at her hungrily while he stroked the back of his free hand down her face and said, "You're more beautiful than I ever imagined…" His voice then took on its hard edge as he commanded, "Panties."

Mary raised her hips again and shuffled to comply. She heard his intake of breath as she skimmed the panties off her hips and down her legs to reveal the last and most intimate part of her body. She felt so far from him as he kept her pinned by her hair, though his body heat was still stifling.

"Stay", growled Marshall, and with that one word pinned her to the bed.

She remained stuck while he languidly disrobed, then soared with a needful elation as he laid his lean, hard, naked body down next to hers, the two of them instinctively entwining from feet to tongues.

He kissed her slowly now, soft, dark, velvety, a mockery of the burning in her belly that cried for all things hard and fast. His hand stroked the side of her throat as though she were made of something breakable, and the unbearable tenderness of it loosed her tears again, little droplets of overwhelment that left long silvery streaks down her cheeks. The tears fell silently, she could neither sob nor could she make them stop. They just continued to leak out of her, as slow and as inevitable as the ache of their need for each other, rolling steadily down her face as Marshall made love to her.

His hands moved over her, making her feel her nakedness, making her feel her vulnerability to him.

She had always been so good at giving herself a choice whether her mind and body connected during sex or not. She hid what she chose to hide, showed what she chose to reveal, responded only as much as she allowed herself to.

All of that control was gone. Naked, empty, helpless. He reached into her and showed her what he wanted her to see. Took things from her that she wasn't ready to give and made her worship him for the violation. With the slightest touch, he brought her mind to its knees. With a knowing look, he made her body blaze. He had her by both ends of her soul at once, and she shuddered in his arms. What else could she expect, when she was finally fucking with her body the man who had fucked her mind all along?

He was good with his fingers. Goddamn he was good with his fingers. Patient and clever and shockingly controlling. He pushed her wherever he wanted her to go, let her go no further 'til she surrendered to him utterly…

He was good with his words, good with his voice. Lusting and soothing and punishing and reassuring… And the sound of him became the lifeline that gave her safety while her mind and body were tearing one another apart…

She begged him to fuck her, needed him to drive out all the emptiness that was inside her.

It took every ounce of his considerable strength not to oblige her, but he withstood, brought her harder to heel with voice and fingers, made her body jump through the hoops of his choosing. She had had men take control of her body. But no one had ever taken her mind before. No one had taken her heart. No one. Until Marshall.

Who would have known that lust and tenderness could keep such close company? She could not have imagined it, and it took Marshall's iron will to force her to see it. But now, with all of it thrust before her eyes, with the knowingness swimming through her blood, she believed. Believed, and let go, drowning in the certain knowledge that there was nothing she could do to protect herself anymore. The only thing left to protect was him, he was the only thing left to protect her.

He held her rocking body a little away from him, pinned her still as he raised himself above her, unable to stand not being fully one with her any longer. This would be his moment of truth, when the last reins of self-control would slip through his fingers, and he would lose himself utterly in the storm and the mess that was Mary. If he lost his self-belief, it would be hell beyond anything he'd ever known. But just as Mary was nothing if she couldn't trust him, he was nothing if he couldn't trust himself.

At that moment, it seemed impossible that sex could ever be just sex. This act of pushing his body into hers was the measure of their hearts and souls.

He extracted soft sobs from her as he drove himself slowly and inexorably down into her.

She bleated his name like a small lost lamb. He growled hers back to her.

He buried his face in her neck, felt her pulse pounding against his lips as he dragged achingly in and out of her.

They were beyond pleasure now, in the realm of sensations more aptly described by pain. Like the deep, sickening sinking shock of being shot.

Mary! His Mary. His sweet, ragged Mary…

He leaned back to look in her eyes, so wide with fear and helplessness. That expression ripped right through his tender heart, halted his breath. This was how he had always wanted to see her, this way, for him. This was what he had feared he couldn't handle. But he was handling it now, commanding her from the most intimate parts of her being with the most intimate parts of his. And he understood that he had been right to be afraid.

This was the Mary behind all the walls, the fragility that necessitated such aggressive defense. The capacity and the willingness to experience such deep, deep hurt. Everything he feared. Everything he loved.

She lay back, opened completely, drowned in emotion, took everything he threw at her without a prayer of resistance. He'd always been so hesitant to break her all the way open, to make her completely dependent on him. And it had always been so precisely what he wanted.

He had never seen a woman so vulnerable before. Certainly not Abigail… And it occurred to him, it's impossible to be vulnerable if you have nothing to hide. Mary had a lifetime of hiding. And she laid it all bare to him now. And he got drunk on the intoxication of it...

* * *

He lay down beside her, chest heaving, and she curled into him, laid her face on him and soaked his chest with her tears as he wrapped his arms around her and crushed her to him. In some weird instinctive gesture, they each laid a hand gingerly, protectively on each other's scarred bullet wounds.

"Marshall", choked Mary in between silent sobs, "I love you." Marshall pressed his lips down on top of her head and stroked her hair with one hand.

"I know… I know", he said thickly, "I love you too."

"I mean like…"

"Yes, I know… me too. And words cannot express… how _sorry I am_ that I ever tried to make it sound like anything less than that…"

* * *

Waking up next to Marshall was even scarier than going to sleep next to him had been. Well, 'on top of' may have been a more accurate description than 'next to'.

She began to peel herself off of him, breaking the thin bond of sweat and tears and… other things… that was gluing them together. His eyes flew open at once, and he caught her by the hair and pulled her close where he could press his face against hers before releasing her again.

Mary stood slowly and tried to look at him laying in her bed. Her whole body began to shake uncontrollably.

"Jesus, did we really do what I think we did?"

Marshall narrowed his eyes.

"It's not exactly the kind of thing I would do on a whim, Mary", he said slowly, emphatically. He rose to be next to her, to catch her if she lost her equilibrium. Mary rubbed her hands up and down her arms, pretending that the trembling was shivers of cold. Marshall knew better.

She glanced at the clock.

"Holy shit, it's eleven. Nora – !"

"Relax. Brandi came in and took care of her about seven. She hasn't cried all morning." Brandi, up at seven, taking care of the baby? Maybe Squish really was growing up.

"You can hear that?" Mary was incredulous on many levels at once. Marshall nodded. "Geez… I might have known you were part bat…"

"Do you think, maybe, just for this one morning, you could take it easy on me?" Marshall requested. Mary froze. She stared up into his face, eyes wide.

"Okay", she agreed seriously.

Mary rummaged in her closet, found her own bathrobe and an old one of Raf's for Marshall. It was comically big on his wiry frame. Mary usually liked guys with some hulk about them. They made her feel small. Marshall had other ways of making her feel small…

The two of them stumbled in bleery-eyed coffee withdrawal down the hallway into the living room.

"Whoa! I wondered whose car that was in the driveway, but YOU were my LAST guess!" Mary heard Brandi's shriek before her eyes were able to lock on target. Where was her sidearm…? "MOM, GUESS WHO MARY'S SLEEPOVER BUDDY IS!"

There was the quick shuffle of feet as Mary's favorite mother came to join the party in the living room.

"Marshall!" squeaked Jinx, "What a surprise, we had no idea you and Mary were…"

Banging each other? If Brandi said, "Banging each other?" so help her God, Mary would vault over the sofa, take Brandi down and tear her head off… Wait, scratch that… first she would remove her child from Brandi's arms, place her safely in Marshall's, and then she would take Brandi down and tear her head off…

"Good morning, Misses Shannon", said Marshall almost sarcastically. Oh my God, was he sucking up to her mother already? "Morning, Brandi."

"Marshall…" giggled Brandi in return. Nora grinned broadly at everyone.

"Well, now that that _stunningly awkward moment _ is over, who wants coffee?" demanded Mary. Marshall and Jinx were staring transfixedly at one another, as though each was seeing a ghost. "Marshall? Kitchen, chop, chop!" Mary marched for the coffee maker. She had to admit, if she were standing in Marshall's fuzzy slippers right now, Jinx would be her primary source of, 'What the fuck did I just do?'

Brandi set Nora down, and then followed Mary and Marshall into the kitchen.

"Wait a minute… But, isn't he supposed to be like, engaged?"

Then again, maybe it would be Brandi.

Mary felt Marshall brace against the wall in pain behind her. Whatever freaky psychic voodoo partner connection they had had before, it had just gotten a hundred times stronger, _er…_ overnight.

"That's none of your…" began Mary.

"Yes, yes I am supposed to be engaged", said Marshall.

"So does this mean you're getting unengaged…?" asked Brandi.

"Shouldn't the technical term be 'disengaged'?" Mary tried to snipe from the sidelines.

"Yes, yes it does", replied Marshall seriously to the original question. Mary looked up from the mug she was holding to gaze pensively into Marshall's eyes. Marshall stared stonily back.

"Wow. Um, okay then. Maybe I will just leave you two to talk about that, or, give each other the death stare, or whatever…"

"Yeah, Brandi, you do that." Mary set about making coffee. Marshall checked his phone.

There was a single text from Abby.

'_Rough night, huh? Let me know you're okay. xoxo'_

Marshall walked across the kitchen, leaned over the sink with his palms resting on the edge, and closed his eyes. He had just cheated on his fiancée. On the woman he had asked to be his wife. He had never so much as cheated on a girlfriend. Not even in college. There was no making this right. What he had to do now was just the least of a number of evils…

"Are you alright?" Mary's voice was trembling. He opened his eyes to see that she was still clutching the same empty mug. She was so vulnerable right now, probably more than she had ever been in her adult life. He had to keep her safe. He could protect only one of the women he cared about, and in order to do that he had to hurt the other. He had tried to choose Abigail as the one he protected. It just hadn't worked that way around.

He had come running back to Mary. He always ran back to Mary. Always protected Mary. Not because she was merely his partner, and not out of habit. If only he had admitted that to himself, trusted himself with that duty, in the beginning.

He walked over to pin Mary between him and the counter, took the mug out of her hands and set it down.

"Yes."

He kissed her passionately, for the sheer pleasure of feeling her melt helplessly under him. This was a much more direct way to silence her fretting mind than all the logic he had tried to use in the past. And far more enjoyable to perform.


	4. Maybe Messy Is What You Need

_Marshall, I need you to remove the phrase "she's my partner" from your arsenal. I know she's your partner…_

_Look, Mary and I –_

_I get it. You know what? I don't get it__**. **_**I don't even think you do**_, not really, and until you do, until you figure this out, I think we need to put any appointments with ministers, any anything with ministers, on hold._

* * *

_If you're having a baby, trust me, we're having a baby._

* * *

_Like many things, an oreo, over time, becomes the very best version of itself._

(Wikiquote In_Plain_Sight 5/31/12)

* * *

Marshall hiked slowly up the gravel path to the house for what might as well be the last time. Best to get as much of the mess over with as possible in one twenty-four hour period.

The Albuquerque heat was sweltering. He could see Abby out front, oversized gardening gloves on. She looked perky and adorable as ever, the work bringing out a light flush in her cheeks. His stomach hated him. He had to agree with his stomach. She came down to greet him as he approached. When she reached to throw her arms around his neck and kiss his cheek, he shied backward.

"What's the matter?" she asked, full of worry, "Did something go badly wrong at the office? I just woke up and you were gone. No text from you, no nothing."

"I wasn't at the office last night", said Marshall honestly. "I was at Mary's. She called about two a.m." Abigail's face clouded with wariness.

"I thought she was supposed to be in Denver…" Marshall couldn't help but hate the way she said "supposed to be". Mary wasn't supposed to be anywhere but safe in his arms. Then again, he wasn't supposed to be breaking Abigail's heart. But nevertheless, here he was.

"She wanted to see me." He was unable to make his voice anything but flat, and it was starting to piss Abby off. That was good, that was healthy. Let her get good and angry at him. Let her blame him for everything, and go easy on herself. She deserved so much better than this. Truly, she did.

"She didn't come all the way back from Denver just to talk to you in the middle of the night…"

"Actually, Abby, that's exactly what she did", breathed Marshall. Abigail yanked off the gloves and threw them down, slammed her hands on her hips.

"Marshall Mann, when the hell are you going to man up and say what you mean and mean what you say?" she shouted. _Sooner than you know, and entirely too late_, thought Marshall.

"Fair enough", said Marshall through gritted teeth, "Here it is: I've decided that Mary is the woman I want to be with. I've decided that asking you to marry me was a mistake." There. He couldn't be any more bluntly cold than that. Abigail's lips pursed, her eyes glittered with hurt and indignation. She coiled like a snake preparing to strike.

"Did you spend all night there?" she spat. What was he supposed to say to that?

"Yes."

"Did you sleep with her?" A long silence. "Did you FUCK her?"

"Yes."

He saw the blow coming, but he did nothing to move himself out of harm's way. Abigail held nothing back. With a closed fist, she might have broken his jaw. With an open hand, it just stung like a bitch.

"What was it, Marshall? Was I not messy enough for you? Because you know she's a total fucking mess…!"

Marshall contemplated the gravel. To say he didn't like himself very much right now was a grand understatement. But he wasn't going to allow that fact to enable Abby to disconnect him from the truth. Not owning his own nature was the source of all this hurt in the first place.

"Sometimes…" said Marshall slowly, "messy is what a person needs…"

"Then you should be the most content man on the face of the planet, because you sure hit the mother-load!" snarled Abby. "She won't be true to you, Marshall, you do realize that? Mary can only love a bad-boy asshole – or hadn't you noticed?"

"Maybe what we all just found out is that I am more of a bad-boy asshole than any of us had ever realized before…" suggested Marshall, quietly, slowly, with resolution and self-loathing in equal measure.

"Well, I hope you two are very happy together", Abby boiled, "When you run out of conversation, you can talk about how fucked up you both are…"

She dragged his ring off her finger and hurled it with stunning accuracy. It felt like a wasp sting where it struck his cheek on top of her reddening slap mark. Instinctively, he nimbly caught it with one hand as it bounced down his front, before it could get lost in the gravel. He slipped it into his jacket pocket.

There was nothing more to say to Abigail. Hopefully he had done all the damage he could do here. He turned his back to her and slunk off down the hill to his car.

* * *

Brandi was the first person Marshall encountered when he stepped back into Mary's house, soul-weary in his bones.

"What did you do to her? She's been singing to the baby all afternoon. Mary doesn't sing. Mary doesn't even let other people sing."

Marshall met her gaze, and Brandi got a rare glimpse into the fathomless depths behind his eyes.

"I loved her", said Marshall simply. "You should try it sometime."

He pushed further into the house, leaving a frozen Brandi behind him.

* * *

Mary was sitting on the back porch bathed in late afternoon light, alone except for Nora cradled in her arms, and she was indeed singing.

"… And if that mocking bird won't sing, Momma's gonna buy you a diamond ring. And if that diamond ring won't shine…"

Marshall slipped silently out of the back door and stood a long time out of sight, enjoying the opportunity to observe the two of them unaware.

Mary glowed. That was the only word for it. For the first time that Marshall had seen since Nora was born, Mary really looked like a mother. Not an overworked, underpaid babysitter, not a secret service agent on high security detail. A mother, overflowing with warmth and affection, pouring this easy love down onto her little one, Nora glowing it all back to her tenfold over, the picture of maternal bliss.

And Marshall understood, better than anyone else ever could, that this was for one simple reason: she just plain felt safe enough that, finally, she could afford to let her emotions flow. Mary didn't need to change the way she felt about life, the universe, and everything. She just needed to be safe enough that she could feel.

He had taken her, and taken her hard. Not so much for the pleasure of it, as to make her belong to him – a belonging that was inherently pleasurable far beyond merely the carnal. He had wanted her, grabbed her, lusted her into submission, until her fears of being unwanted could not stand in the face of the fierceness of his desire, of his committed body-and-spirit need of her.

He had had to make that leap of faith, blaze a trail for her to follow. And now he reaped his reward for his courage, watching her secretly in the evening light, memorizing the new shape of her features, softened now by tenderness. Mary, as he'd always imagined her, made flesh and blood before his eyes…

He walked over and knelt beside her, and in her unguarded-ness she lit up with happy surprise at the sight of him.

"Whoa… nice hand print!" She knew where he'd just come back from – there were no prizes for guessing who had put that on Marshall's face. "Geez – who knew you could pack so much angry into such a small package…"

"Well", said Marshall softly, "I did a pretty good job of cramming it in there." Mary reached over and stroked around the outline of the hand-shaped red welt on Marshall's face, with such unbearable delicate tenderness that his stomach somersaulted and his vision blurred. "Oh, Mary…" he whispered breathlessly. Her affection was like a deluge on a nine year drought…

Marshall cleared his throat to be able to speak more clearly. "I'm going to follow you to Denver."

"Huh?"

"I actually know a guy who's been wanting to swap assignments for a couple years now… of course, I would never go as long as you were here… but now it works out perfectly…"

"Wait, what do you mean 'perfectly'? Marshall, you can't transfer, you'll lose your promotion to branch chief. You'd be back to inspector."

"I can't stay in Albuquerque. We can't stay Albuquerque. Abigail shouldn't have to deal with us any more than she already has. And I don't want to force her to be the one to move."

"Do you have any clue how miniscule my apartment is?"

"We'll get a house", said Marshall quickly, nonchalantly, as if WITSEC inspectors moved in together every day, "And, Mary… it means we will be partners again."

"Um, is that a conflict of interest? Won't someone get their knickers in a twist worrying about whether you'll be able to deal with placing me in jeopardy and, you know, vice versa?"

"Mary, seeing you in harm's way is no more difficult today than it has been for years now… That's how it's always been, for me… We've got the track record to prove that we can perform under those conditions…"

Mary nodded slowly, thoughtfully, then whispered, "It's been the same, for me…"

She was still lightly stroking his cheek. He still felt dizzied by it. Would he ever get used to this? He could enjoy trying…

"Marshall?"

"Hm?"

"I'm really sorry it had to happen like this…" Mary's eyes were huge with genuine regret, fixated by the slap mark. She knew what all of this was costing him, internally. Nora had drifted off in her lap.

Marshall caught the hand that stroked his face, almost painfully, stopping her and giving her a little shake to drive home his message.

"That's the last time I ever want to hear you apologize for anything to do with this. I mean it, Mary." There was just enough of scary Marshall present to let her know he meant business.

Marshall reached into his jacket pocket. "As long as I've got this hand, I believe this belongs to you…"

He laid the diamond engagement ring on Mary's palm.

Mary, of course, said the first thing that popped into her mind.

"The same ring you gave Abigail?"

Marshall shrugged his shoulders.

"It's a family heirloom. I can't replace it."

"A ring with a past." Mary raised the antique between her thumb and forefinger, gazed at it appraisingly. The setting and stone sparkled in the sunset.

"A ring with a past for a girl with a past. From a guy with a past", said Marshall slowly, thickly. "Sometimes, having a past makes a thing more beautiful…"

"Yeah, but only if it was beautiful to begin with…" Mary turned to look at him. Marshall stroked the locks of hair out of her face and stared up into her eyes.

"Exactly." Mary was frozen, stunned. Even at her worst she could not possibly have argued such sincerity. "Put it on", said Marshall, the sound barely coming out of his throat…

"Are you sure you don't want to take this slower?" asked Mary shakily, "I mean, we only just started being 'us', in that way… Don't you want to wait and see how it goes?"

"If there's one thing I've learned, Mary", said Marshall with a gravity and a self-assurance that made her heart skip several beats, "it's that with you, a man can't 'wait to see how it goes'. The moment a man steps into the ring with you, he has to know how he wants it to go. And he has to have the unshakable conviction that that's how he's going to make it go. I've been moving way too slow for way too long. I feel like I'm only just now getting up to speed."

Mary did not even try to stop the two slow tears that ran down her face as she pushed Marshall's ring onto her hand.

This was what had been missing the last time she had worn an engagement ring. This pure, unconflicted fear. This sense of rightness. This overwhelming immediacy that she wanted to charge into, not back away from. She couldn't believe she had missed out on that feeling all her life, 'til this moment. But she had it now, had it with Marshall, all she had done was let go, was stop trying so hard to be right and strong, and in that moment he was suddenly right there, being everything she wanted – needed – him to be. Her rightness and her strength – and she relinquished the responsibility to him.

No one – let alone a man – had ever looked at her with the certainty that was etched into Marshall's face.

The tears on Mary's face and the diamond on Mary's hand glittered alike in the desert sunset. Marshall could not decide which was the more beautiful. He would take them together, the joy and the anguish, knowing that the one could not be so potent without the other.

And at the end of the day, couldn't the same be said of he and Mary? Their life together may not be the most uncomplicated, the easiest. But could one of them ever be without the other? Without Mary beside him, every day, Marshall started to forget who he was. And he knew that the same was true for Mary.

By asking Mary to release him, he had nearly killed off his own soul. Free from her, free from the courage and the passion and the determination she called up in him – demanded of him – he was next to nothing. Neither of them could be themselves without the other to act as constant reminder of their own deep inner nature.

And isn't that the purest form of love, mused Marshall, to live your own highest truth, no matter what the cost?


End file.
